Hey Toad, I see what you're saying now. Yeah, I can get behind that. And thanks for the "Father's house..." info.
Lazs, regarding:
"Is any of that stuff really needed?
Can't you just enjoy stuff as it happens realizing that everything (and logically even life) is transitional? Well no, it's not
needed. But that doesn't make it any less desirable. I'll try to put it in a way that answers your question and also touches on the discussion Toad and I have been having. And yeah, blah blah blah it's just my opinion and sorry if it offends anyone blah blah blah.
I had been brought up to understand that spirituality was religion.
And I had come to see that religion was about adhering to its tenets in this life in order that one may enter heaven in the next. And that the only real difference between the various religions were the tenets that had to be adhered to.
The practice of it being these little he-said/she-said history lessons, which are used to demonstrate how we can follow the tenets in modern, everyday life.
So you've got the rule book. Then you've got the guys who every Sunday will pick out a little section of the rule book and make the hard to understand language easier to understand. Then everyone goes off in their own separate directions to follow the rules.
If you break the rules, you have to do something or other. Admit it to someone, or do a ritual or something like that. You can break them seriously enough to get kicked out of the club, but you can never break them seriously enough to get kicked out of the
ultimate club, as any death row inmate will attest to.
Then, the rule followers achieve heaven, and the rule breakers suffer hell.
All there is to it. Or it would have been, had not there emerged a group of people not content with just abiding by the rules, and instead find it their business to see that
everybody else abides by them aswell. But that's another subject....
I could never get into it. Even when it was being made a very accommodating thing for me to do, when I had to do something.
Because by making the next stop on the ride (some call it heaven) the goal, and by making life a proving ground in order to achieve that goal, they lessen this life here, that we're living. Get through 'X' as you're told, and you'll be rewarded with "Y."
I don't want to just
get through life according to some rules. I want to live it fully. And just what the hell is heaven, anyways?
It didn't make any sense to me, so I did my own independent research.
From guys who've been around a hell of a lot longer than JC and since.
So here lazs, finally, this brings me to the "why bother" part. You say: "Can't you just enjoy stuff as it happens realizing that everything (and logically even life) is transitional?." I say: you've hit the nail on the head.
I don't think that there's a beginning to life, nor do I think that there's an ending to it. When those starting/stopping points are removed, what's left? What does that make the life we're existing in now? Just a part of its continuation. So in that context; "why bother with spirituality?" You bother with it because
you are already living it.
It is not about acting differently in this stage, in order to fulfill some requirement of the next. It's merely recognizing your place in all of this, and embracing that. Enjoying life through it. Toad, Dryer said that "we are not humans having a spiritual experience, we are spirits having a human experience." It succinctly gets at the core of what it's about.
Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." I believe this to be true also. So why would spirituality be left out of the equation? I believe that we need to be attentive to our physical health, that we should be attentive to our relationships, that we be attentive to our aspirations, security, creativity, and last but not least, our spirituality.
So it's not a question of "why not just appreciate the life you're living." Because it's not exclusive. "Why bother?" You bother because it's an essential part of your existence, and its consideration leads to greater awareness, which leads to greater selflessness, greater appreciation, colors become more vivid, interactions become more profound, and life ultimately becomes more meaningful, more fulfilling, and just basically more fun to be a part of.
